Cite as: 523 U. S. 420 (1998)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
In the early part of this century, the State Department permitted the transmission of citizenship from unwed mother to child reasoning that, for the child born out of wedlock, the mother "stands in the place of the father." House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, A Report Proposing A Revision and Codification of the Nationality Laws of the United States, Part One: Proposed Code with Explanatory Comments, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 18 (Comm. Print 1939) (hereinafter Proposed Code). Ultimately, however, the Attorney General rejected the Department's reasoning, finding it incompatible with § 1993's exclusive reference to fathers. See 39 Op. Atty. Gen. 397, 398 (1939).
Women's inability to transmit their United States citizenship to children born abroad was one among many gender-based distinctions drawn in our immigration and nationality laws. The woman who married a foreign citizen risked losing her United States nationality. In early days, "marriage with an alien, whether a friend or an enemy, produce[d] no dissolution of the native allegiance of the wife." Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Pet. 242, 246 (1830) (Story, J.). By the end of the 19th century, however, a few courts adopted the view that a woman's nationality followed her husband's, see, e. g., Pequignot v. Detroit, 16 F. 211, 216 (CC ED Mich. 1883), particularly when the woman resided abroad in her husband's country, see, e. g., Ruckgaber v. Moore, 104 F. 947, 948-949 (CC ED NY 1900). See generally C. Bredbenner, A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship 58-59 (1998) (hereinafter Bredbenner); Sapiro, Women, Citizenship, and Nationality: Immigration and Naturalization Policies in the United States, 13 Politics & Soc. 1, 4-10 (1984). State Department officials inclined towards this view as well. See L. Gettys, The Law of Citizenship in the United States 118 (1934). In 1907, Congress settled the matter: It provided by statute that a female United States citizen automatically lost her citizenship upon marriage to an alien. Act of Mar. 2, 1907, § 3, 34 Stat. 1228. This Court upheld the statute, noting that "[t]he identity of husband and
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